IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, March 20, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As critics accuse Planned Parenthood of trying to facilitate the sex lives of minors, a featured speaker at one of the abortion provider’s local affiliates has suggested parents allow their teenage children to have sex in their home.
Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernadino Counties invited Amy T. Schalet, author of Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, to keynote the organization’s “Consider This” luncheon last week.
Dr. Schalet, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said American parents should be more like their counterparts in the Netherlands, who allow teenagers to have sex openly under their roof.
Schalet told local media she finds it unfortunate that America, girls believe “in their parents’ eyes they would be a disappointment if they were to engage in sex.”
“In the Netherlands if a girl is in a relationship, she’s not a slut for wanting sex, for making decisions about sex,” she said. Most parents deem teen sexuality a “part of your life that you are allowed to own and make choices about.”
The sociologist, who spent part of her life in the Netherlands, said Dutch parents consider children ready for intercourse at age 16. “Teen pregnancy rates are about four times as high here. Birth rates about eight times as high.”
She added nearly 60 percent of Dutch teens are taking contraceptives by the time they begin having sex.
As she did in a New York Times op-ed, last year Schalet suggested parents who allowed open sexual activity in their homes exercised greater parental control over their children than those who preached abstinence. Schalet wrote that a Dutch teenager who told her parents about her sexual relationship with her boyfriend “enjoyed time and a new closeness with her family.”
“Obviously sleepovers aren’t a direct route to family happiness,” Schalet wrote. “But even the most traditional parents can appreciate the virtue of having their children be comfortable bringing a girlfriend or boyfriend home, rather than have them sneak around.” Unlike the American teenagers I interviewed, who said they felt they had to split their burgeoning sexual selves from their family roles, the Dutch teens had a chance to integrate different parts of themselves into their family life.”
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